


Truly, Madly

by manic_intent



Series: Truly, Deeply [2]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M, Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead, That sequel to Truly Deeply, inspired by Adele's Hello, postcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 11:46:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5089535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It did not, in hindsight, come as a surprise to Napoleon that Sanders was again the architect of the last tectonic upset in Napoleon’s life, if accidentally. They were drinking cold beers at the back of Sanders’ small ranch in Virginia, watching the horses, the three scruffy, too-friendly black and white mutts that had failed first as guard dogs and apparently failed now as farm dogs gambolling and rolling in the dirt at their feet. The autumnal grass was scorched a dusty brown, the cloudless, unforgiving slice of sky above them an unbroken blue. </p><p>Sanders had, rather alarmingly, gone full native in his semi-retirement. He had proper mud-caked cowboy boots, not the fancy trimmed fall-apart shit that got foisted off on curious tourists. He had the faded graying denim jeans, the over-washed flannel white shirt, rolled up at thick elbows. Even put out to pasture, his gray eyes were sharp in his pugnacious face, and he frowned and whistled as one of the mutts bit another’s ear too hard. The fight broke up instantly, both dogs panting apologetically. It reminded Napoleon instantly and depressingly of his early life in the CIA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truly, Madly

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to purge the Adele!Hello ficbunny with Firebird but it didn’t work. It’s everywhere. It’s even playing on the speakers at work, along with all her other albums, making it worse D: So drastic measures necessary I guess. Damn you Adele! D: Always breaking my heart ♥
> 
> When I first heard the song I did think of the Truly, Deeply verse more or less immediately. So for those who have heard the song you probably know how this fic is going to go (Fair warning!). For those who haven’t heard the song, go check it out :) Man, her voice is awesome.

I.

It did not, in hindsight, come as a surprise to Napoleon that Sanders was again the architect of the last tectonic upset in Napoleon’s life, if accidentally. They were drinking cold beers at the back of Sanders’ small ranch in Virginia, watching the horses, the three scruffy, too-friendly black and white mutts that had failed first as guard dogs and apparently failed now as farm dogs gambolling and rolling in the dirt at their feet. The autumnal grass was scorched a dusty brown, the cloudless, unforgiving slice of sky above them an unbroken blue.

Sanders had, rather alarmingly, gone full native in his semi-retirement. He had proper mud-caked cowboy boots, not the fancy trimmed fall-apart shit that got foisted off on curious tourists. He had the faded graying denim jeans, the over-washed flannel white shirt, rolled up at thick elbows. Even put out to pasture, his gray eyes were sharp in his pugnacious face, and he frowned and whistled as one of the mutts bit another’s ear too hard. The fight broke up instantly, both dogs panting apologetically. It reminded Napoleon instantly and depressingly of his early life in the CIA. 

“Your information came good in West Berlin,” Sanders said, as he took another slow swig of his beer. “Caught the last of those Baader-Meinhof bastards.”

“Glad to hear it.” Transitioning from being a select re-appropriator of art into a select re-appropriator of information had seemed like a matter of natural progression. He was getting on in years: he had seen four decades come and go, and the art appropriation business, though fun, was a game for younger men. Information brokerage, on the other hand, was a game for older people who had learned subtlety and patience. 

“‘Course,” Sanders added dryly, “The current director still bitched my ear out about your goddamned fee. Said that you were still, I quote, a fuckin’ American, and maybe you should be doing your fuckin’ duty.”

“And I’m sure that the cleaning teams wash the bathrooms in Langley out of sheer patriotism alone.”

“S’what I told them. Free market. Nothin’ more fuckin’ American than that.” Sanders shrugged. He had grown slightly more mellow in his old age, even as his hair had withered into wisps over his scalp. “‘Sides, if we don’t pay, Mossad’s happy to pay, yeah? And good luck to us if you go over to them.”

“That’s exactly right, sir.” Napoleon decided not to add that the Mossad were themselves good paymasters as well. At present, however, their interests lay with their neighbors and not with the CIA.

“So what brings you all the way up here then?” Sanders inquired. “Tired of Nassau already?” He smirked.

Napoleon swallowed a sigh, and made a mental note to seriously consider relocating permanently. “I heard something interesting in the rumour mill the other day. It seems our Russian friends might have developed a more efficient way of tapping transoceanic cables.” 

Sanders grunted. “They always try. Usually we notice.”

“They haven’t used submarines to do it before.” It was Napoleon’s turn to smirk, if carefully, as Sanders swore. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Word gets out,” Napoleon said blithely. “Here and there. Don’t get too mad. It’s an idea that’s just about good enough to steal, isn’t it?”

“Langley isn’t going to like this,” Sanders said gloomily. “All right, Solo. What d’you want.”

“I might know where this secret Soviet mission is headed,” Napoleon noted innocently. Sanders began to bargain, but that was fairly token nowadays. To the CIA, Napoleon was now a mercenary, but a useful one, and their black budget was healthy now that the Cold War had started to ease. 

Once the trade was done and the phone calls were made, Sanders sat back down in his deck chair, with a second round of cold beers. “Haven’t heard much from our UN friends,” Sanders noted casually.

Napoleon wasn’t fooled. He drank some of the second bottle and pretended to look bored. That probably didn’t fake out Sanders either. “They’re busy, here and there.”

“Heard they were working on the ground in ‘Nam.”

“I very much doubt that.” 

“It’s a fuckin’ mess down there and it ain’t going well for us. Or anyone.”

Napoleon nodded. “So I hear.” 

“Yeah.” Sanders spat, away and at the dirt. One of the dogs barked, slapping its tail on the ground. “People, huh?” 

“That’s war for you,” Napoleon said doubtfully. 

“S’rite,” Sanders said, gloomy again. “Sometimes it feels like all we do is repeat history. Over and fuckin’ over.” 

“You’re in a fine mood today, sir.” 

“Me? Naw. I’m retired. Mostly. Got a nice ranch, my horses, my Nancy, we both still got our health, hell, I’m gonna be a granddaddy in Spring.”

“Congratulations.” 

Sanders brushed the sentiment away with an impatient flick of his wrist, though Napoleon could see that the cantankerous old man was pleased. “What about you? Settling down yet? Finally stopped fuckin’ around?” 

Napoleon laughed, startled. “Somehow I never thought I’d hear a question like that from you, sir.” 

Sanders grunted. “You’re a piece of work and you’re still a pain in the neck even during my retirement, Solo. But seein’ as the CIA’s paying us both good money to be friendly-like, I guess I might as well be fuckin’ friendly, yeah?” 

“No, not settling down quite as yet,” Napoleon decided, amused. Sanders’ belligerence was feigned. 

The old man was bored: at least some days. He had been at Langley for too long, and put down roots there, lived and breathed a life of secrets and lies for decades. Here in this cute little Virginian farm with his dogs and his horses, Sanders was adrift, and Napoleon was more or less his only link back to a life that was all that Sanders had known for a long time. It made the cranky old man bearable company. 

“You should. Ain’t right, dying alone. And you’re not half bad.”

“Everyone dies alone, sir,” Napoleon pointed out. “It’s an essentially individual experience.”

“ _Death_ is,” Sanders corrected. “ _Dyin’_ , now, that’s everything that happens in between you gettin’ born and you goin’ to the Big Hereafter. We all start dyin’ from the moment we get born. Shouldn’t have to do it alone.” 

“I think you’ve had too much beer, sir,” Napoleon said dryly, and Sanders rolled his eyes and tried to change the subject back to the Mossad, at which point Napoleon promptly forgot about the philosophising. It was only afterwards, when he was back in Nassau and quietly uprooting his operation that the conversation crept back in, insidiously. That was the problem with simple ideas. They took root in the shadow of reason and spread like cankers. 

Napoleon still knew where _He_ yet (probably) lived, of course. The flat in Brighton Beach was still owned by the same Ukrainian shell company that had purchased it the year that Illya had started to work for U.N.C.L.E. full time. It was with a certain fit of fey nostalgia and gut-deep tension that Napoleon fished out a photograph he had taken of the harbour in Nassau, of the scything birds, the rocky beach, the white ships that sat like pale knives in opal glass. For a moment, Napoleon wavered over whether to write a message. Sign it, perhaps. Or print some apology, bloodlessly meaningless as that would be after all this time. They were neither of them young enough any longer to want for empty gestures. 

In the end, Napoleon posted the photograph, unsigned, no return address. It would be the first of a few.

interlude.

Bombay, December, 1970. An elegant Indian lady, resplendent in diamond-checkered orange sari, one tiny sandalled foot on the ground, the other and her hands on her white Lambretta, polished to a proud sheen, the letters ‘BML’ and ‘393’ stark and blocky on the plate. Behind her, unfocused, a fortress-like stone arch with four dome-tipped towers. Here the new, there the old. The woman smiles at the camera, inscrutable, ageless and beautiful forever.

II.

The Mossad _katsa_ contact assigned to Napoleon was a sardonic young lady by the assumed name of Esther, her eyes far too hard for her age, her smile always too sharp. She had rich walnut hair that she chose to wear thickly coiffed, and she walked with the unhurried grace of a hunting cat. She reminded Napoleon of Gaby, sometimes, which was probably why he tended to pretend to shower her with attention, and Esther, in return, pretended to enjoy it.

“Your information was not so good,” Esther told Napoleon, as they sat by the sidewalk in a Parisian café. 

She wore a large, defiantly unfashionable wide-brimmed pink hat, and a pale cream sundress with large horn-rimmed sunglasses, and somehow it all worked together, several patently disparate pieces fitting around Esther’s elfin beauty to work startlingly together as a whole. An old memory echoed, of a dress shop, an argument, but Napoleon made sure that he smiled, and took a sip of his coffee, and leaned back in his seat. _He_ , at least, was dressed fashionably, in a good suit, newly cut.

“Your people still got what you wanted.”

“Only because we decided to cover many bases.” Esther’s French was exotically accented, and two tables down, a pair of young Frenchmen about her age were staring at Napoleon with undisguised contempt and envy. To all appearances, Napoleon was a rich American getting on in years, out with a young mistress.

“So it all worked out in the end,” Napoleon said brightly, and patted Esther’s wrist, just to make the young Frenchmen stiffen up in jealousy. Her face hidden from her admirers by her hat, Esther was not, however, oblivious - she rolled her eyes, and lowered her tone. 

“One Nazi less in the world is a better world for it,” Esther said shortly. “But our hunting budget is on a shoestring. We will now pay for top flight target information only. So be more efficient.”

“My darling Esther,” Napoleon noted, amused. “I’m not exactly young enough to go haring around after Nazis personally any longer. I’m the middle man now.”

Esther stared at him, unimpressed. “Just so you know. And. By the way. Your friends in the UN. Very irritating.”

Napoleon kept his expression carefully bland. “I have friends everywhere. It’s difficult to keep track of them all.” 

“Tall, blonde, very Soviet?” Esther inquired impatiently. “You worked with Illya Kuryakin before, no?”

Hearing Illya’s name spoken out loud, even in Esther’s accent, was like an electric jolt, even though Napoleon had braced himself for it. “Uncomfortable experience,” he said, perhaps lamely. Esther was studying him with a cat’s impersonal malice. “What did he do now?”

“Interfered with operations in Palestine. Tell him, if he does it again, we will remove his testicles with a blunt knife. Yes?”

Napoleon sighed. The Mossad was one of the world’s smallest intelligence agencies - and one of the fiercest. “I’m not exactly on speaking terms with U.N.C.L.E., my dear.” 

“Either you get them the message or we send them a carpet bomb,” Esther said sweetly, and petted Napoleon’s knuckles with mock affection. “Joking.” 

“No you’re not,” Napoleon said sadly, and Esther smirked at him before rising from her chair. 

Later, Napoleon wavered between a photograph of the Eiffel Tower - perhaps too touristy - and a photo of a street in the Latin Quarter, narrow, a cyclist straight-backed down the middle of the road, the tables thronging with young men and women, absorbed in each other, ignorant of the world and its cares. He chose the second photograph, turned it over, and wrote on the back ’Try not to upset the Mossad,’ paused, and added ‘darling’, recklessly, pen indenting the back of the paper. _Darling_. He had never called Illya that before, even when they had dallied together. It would have been fundamentally dishonest then. It would be viciously dishonest now.

In the end, Napoleon burned the second photograph, wrote ‘Stop upsetting the Mossad’ on the back of the first, and mailed it to Brighton Beach.

interlude.

Mexico City, June, 1971. A street impossibly choked with cars, old and new, mostly old. A small bus, trying to turn impatiently into the throng. Above, a spiderweb of wiring, a cat’s cradle of electricity spun between sturdy blocks with sleepy windows; men amble to and fro on the leftmost pavement, their faces blank, indifferent, sun-dark.

III.

Napoleon might have run to every corner in the world before, but deep down he knew that New York was his home. He loved its avarice, its fierce materialism, its unselfconscious ironies, its splendidly self-absorbed indifference. New York was the city closest to Napoleon’s soul, and mired in the never-sleeping thrum of its heartbeat, Napoleon felt at home.

He avoided Brighton Beach, but he did go to West Village. He had kept the townhouse, arranging for a housekeeper to come by now and then. Napoleon had arrived directly from the airport, and he was tired and hungry; he hadn’t been to the West Village townhouse in nearly four years, and as such he was annoyed to note at a first glance that some things were out of place. 

The couches had been moved aside, and an armchair remained in the centre of the living room, the back to the mantlepiece. It faced the wall beside the stairway up to the mezzanine floor. The Monet print that had hung there was gone, and in its place was a large world map, nailed crudely to the wall, hard enough to crack the plaster. 

Napoleon stared openmouthed at the violent vandalism meted on his beautiful house, so shocked that for a moment he wavered between sheer disbelief and sheer outrage, and then he realized that photographs had been tacked in turn to the map. _His_ photographs. Nassau, Bombay, Paris, Romania… Moscow, Mexico City, Hiroshima, London. Some other cities were circled with red ink, with crabbed notes in Russian scrawled on tacked on slips of paper. Napoleon recognised Illya’s determinedly cramped handwriting.

The writing was old, Napoleon noted, as he stepped closer, and the map was yellowing. Only the photographs were new. Newer. Illya had stopped looking for him at some point, and then Napoleon had sent the damned photographs and- A little dazed, Napoleon checked out the rest of the townhouse, but it was untouched, and he found himself back at the map, hands tucked in his pockets, bags left forgotten by the kitchen counter. Regret was foreign company, all the more unwelcome for how suddenly it weighed on his conscience.

interlude.

Coney Island, January, 1972. Banks of metal waves frozen in steep crests of candy white and red strips, running rust and filth up two curving steps to an uncertain apex, beyond, a chain-link fence, a squat silo-like gray tower. Children running up and down the abandoned slide, grimy, short-sleeved, laughing. They look feral in the harsh exposure of the afternoon warmth. On the back of the photograph, a return address: a mail drop in Monaco.

IV.

The U.N.C.L.E. contact turned out to be Gaby. The years had been good to her, and she wore maturity with grace. Gaby Teller walked confidently now, a full agent with a sterling record, as far as Napoleon’s associates knew. They smiled at each other like old friends, and the expanse of years between them seemed sharply trivial. They had tea at the Savoy, and Gaby seemed to have lost little of her exuberant charm, grinning with girlish delight as the stacked trays of cakes and finger sandwiches arrived.

“Disappointed to see me?” Gaby teased, after the cucumber sandwiches. Her German accent was gone, for a moment, then it wasn’t.

“Ecstatic, actually. You brighten my life,” Napoleon said blandly, and Gaby grinned at him, impishly. Training had honed her considerable charms, fine-tuned her instincts. He was being assessed carefully, and Gaby showed almost no hint of it.

“Am I the only person who brightens your life?”

“Sadly yes. We could have been so good together, darling.” Napoleon drawled, and this time Gaby laughed, belatedly covering her mouth. “Ah, I’ll now have to pretend that I didn’t hear all that derisive laughter.”

“You have wrinkles now,” Gaby said mercilessly. 

“Distinguished.”

“Become a mercenary.”

“Had to pay the bills.”

“Sense of taste still the same.”

“Classic.” 

“I,” Gaby said wryly, “Really missed you, you asshole.”

Napoleon raised his eyebrows. “Good Lord. Watch your language, young lady,” he said playfully, “We’re in the Savoy. You’ll cause the maitre’d to have a heart attack.”

“I’m not young any longer.”

“That’s just a matter of opinion. You’ve certainly become more beautiful.”

Gaby rolled her eyes. They had cakes, and tea and scones, and when the trays were cleared, Gaby set her teacup down, growing serious again. “You have information about Black September’s Lamb Project.”

“I may have.” 

“Can we just skip over the part where we both beat around the track then pretend to negotiate? Can we just settle on a price?” 

“Only if you want to take the fun out of everything,” Napoleon protested, but in the end Gaby had her way, and matters were duly settled. Instead of rising to leave, however, Gaby poured herself a second cup of tea. 

“So how have you been?” she asked earnestly. 

She was genuinely curious, _concerned_ , even. Napoleon hid his smile. He envied Gaby sometimes. She had a refreshingly ruthless view of the world, a great asset for a covert agent - and a friend. Regardless of what Napoleon was now, Gaby still considered them friends. It was puzzling, in a way, and perhaps humbling as well: if Napoleon was the sort who could be humbled.

“Here and there. You?” Napoleon asked, deliberately misunderstanding the question.

“The same.” Gaby waited, but as Napoleon merely smiled at her, she prompted, “Aren’t you going to ask me about Illya?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

“I think he missed you too,” Gaby began, then hesitated. “But that was before.” 

“Good.” Napoleon wasn’t sure what to feel about that. Relief, maybe, at the lessening of guilt. Disappointment, irrationally. It had been years. Time was the great healer of wounds. 

“Now I think maybe he just wants to kill you,” Gaby said quietly, and there was no quick smile, no humour. “That’s why he’s in Turkey while I’m here.” 

Ice washed confusion away, and left numbness in its wake. It was only with supreme effort that Napoleon managed a wry smile. “That’s a rather extreme escalation. Besides, it’s been years. If he really wanted to kill me, I probably still wouldn’t be here talking to you.” 

“You didn’t see the wall at your place? The West Village house? I know you were in New York recently.”

“What were _you_ doing at my house?” Napoleon made a mental note to rework his travel arrangements. If U.N.C.L.E. had heard of it, with its thoroughly underfunded network, then Napoleon was starting to get careless.

Gaby shrugged, as if to say _that’s not the part that’s important_. “I was curious? Really, though. There are _photographs_. I think he’s been following you. Maybe he just doesn’t want to kill you _yet_.” 

“You’re assuming that the map has anything to do with me.”

“Please,” Gaby said, unimpressed. “I can read Russian now as well as you can. I’ve seen his notes. Do you want me to talk to him?” 

“No,” Napoleon decided, tiredly. “Let him find me.” Gaby was mistaken, in any case. The mail drop in Monaco had remained pointedly empty. However angry Illya had been before, however hurt, those sentiments had long burned to ashes cooled and scattered. 

Finding out about all that only now was a pity - or was it? It wasn’t as though Napoleon would have changed his mind about retirement, years ago. Now, then, and before, he kept both feet on the open road and did not look back, however tempting it was, however much it ached. Wanderlust was seared into every inch of his soul, and Napoleon was still restless. He had seen all of the world, yet there was still all of the world to see. Tomorrow: Norway, Napoleon decided. He’ll send a photograph from there.

interlude.

Norway, August, 1972. Harbour Bergen, the water a soft cobalt blanket of shallow ripples, the sky a slow blush of pale blue to cyan. Flowers were packed in white-banked beds on a low barge, from brilliant crimson to yolk-yellow to royal purple. Ships idled in the water, while beyond, flat-faced buildings with conical tips sat in ranks of white, red and purple along the opposite bank. On the back, a phone number.

V.

Illya was not at home - Napoleon’s informants told him that someone using one of Illya’s favourite passports had landed in Cuba this morning. The apartment in Brighton Beach looked about the same as Napoleon remembered it. There was a second rank of books on the makeshift bookshelf - that was about it for changes. It was still a bachelor’s flat, painfully - militantly - spartan. A chair had been pulled up to the window, a book left partly read upon it. Perhaps tellingly, it was Ivan Bunin’s _Tyomnyye allei_. Dark Avenues. The wild roses, blossoming.

_We all die alone._

_No one should die alone._

Napoleon had broken in out of sheer curiosity and sheer impulse. It was, he decided, a very bad idea after all. He leaned with his back against the modest kitchen counter, and felt somewhat shamefaced. He was trespassing, and felt acutely embarrassed about it. This was a rather novel emotion for a thief as old as he was. 

He wasn’t even exactly sure what he was doing. Somehow Illya’s silence had catapulted Napoleon straight from a mild Sanders-caused impulse to something close to obsession. He knew that he should drop this line of pursuit and return to the open road. Nothing like this ever ended well, with hurt feelings on one end and something ignoble on the other. The photograph that he had tucked into his inner suit pocket felt suddenly heavy. 

Letting out a sigh, Napoleon slipped out of the flat, taking care to leave it exactly as it was when he found it, even replacing the little ‘tell’ of a slip of paper that Illya had wedged high in the front door. As he stepped out into the warm afternoon, a hand hitched into a pocket, he nearly walked right into Illya.

 _Illya_. 

Time had treated Illya with far more grace than Napoleon himself. Illya was still straight-backed, forbiddingly tall, his pale gold hair impeccably combed, handsome in a light gray suit and a dark blue tie, worn to accentuate his piercing blue eyes, which blazed for a moment before hardening. His mouth thinned into a flat line, and his hand tightened over the handle of his suitcase. 

“Going somewhere?” Illya drawled. Unlike Gaby, Illya had not contrived to learn to lose his accent: it curled and harshened his words, defiantly exotic. 

“Happened to be in the area, was wondering whether you were in,” Napoleon said, as blandly as he could, ready to bolt if he had to. There was a back door to the ground floor, which led out towards a haphazardly maintained communal garden. 

“Now I am,” Illya said curtly. “What do you want?” 

Napoleon was momentarily at a loss. What _did_ he want? He was not here to mend fences. He wasn’t even here to make amends. He had come here out of curiosity, because the open road had led him here. He was here on the poorest of pretences and he had no prepared excuse.

Thankfully, Illya seemed to decide that no answer was sufficient answer. “Wait here,” he said flatly. “I leave bag upstairs. Then we go for coffee. Yes?” 

Napoleon briefly considered bolting anyway. Now. Or maybe in five minutes, when Illya was off. “Sure.” The impulse faded.

They sat at a sidewalk cafe a block down. Illya was tense, his fingers drumming briefly on the little three-legged table, making it wobble, then he drew his hands away and curled them tightly in his elbows. Napoleon knew the warning signs. He was beginning to wish that he had run after all. They sat in silence until the coffee arrived, in steaming mugs, banded near the lip with a strip of black on white ceramic. Napoleon drank. Illya ignored it. 

Finally, Napoleon asked, as carefully as he could, “How’s life?”

“Tolerable.” 

“Gaby’s been well.”

“I know.”

“What about Waverly?”

“Still alive.”

“Ever thought about going home to Moscow?”

“No.” 

Napoleon swallowed a sigh by taking another sip. On the other hand, Illya most probably wasn’t going to kill him in public. “Gaby said that you wanted to kill me.” 

This got him a sidelong, considering glance. “Not any more.” 

That wasn’t very reassuring. “Good to hear…?”

“Why did you start sending me those photographs?” Illya asked bluntly. “It took me some time to realize that it was you.”

“Oh.” That had been, perhaps, a little of an egocentric oversight. 

“I was only sure after the one you sent from Paris.” 

“The Mossad’s still seriously upset with you, by the way.”

“I know.” Illya seemed disinterested. “Stop changing subject.”

And now… and now he _knew_. “I guess I wanted to say that I was sorry,” Napoleon said tentatively. “For before. I wanted to talk.” 

There was a long silence. Illya looked away, at the cars prowling slowly up and down the street, ignoring the men and women who passed them by, occasionally shooting Illya admiring glances. They were on the wrong side of Brighton Beach, facing inwards, not on the shorewalk. Above, held aloof by grids of metal and teeth of steel the trains looped screeching overhead at regular intervals. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Illya said finally, slowly, as though tasting the words in the air, trying to fit them into place. “Not any more.” 

Napoleon straightened up, managing belatedly to hide his surprise - and a curl of unwelcome disappointment. Why should he be surprised? It had been _years_. People healed. People moved on. Even Napoleon had made his peace with his past. “That’s… good.” 

“Did not say that I forgive you,” Illya added unemotionally. “But. I think I should be grateful.” Napoleon glanced over, into cold, icy blue eyes, intense with something that was like hatred, perhaps, something that had crawled out wounded, birthed of murdered love. “You taught me a valuable lesson in sentiment.”

interlude.

Hong Kong, 1973. A yellowing bus worms its way towards the viewer, a man on a scooter heads the other way. Tall blocks of white flats anchor down the sky, festooned with signage in mandarin. Street lamps run through the centre of the road, tilted subtly to the left, while a grassy mountain rises beyond, turning what remains of the sky to an angular white slit. Streetside shops throng the left of the picture, with fruits on display, the sloping roof of the shop rising to a gentle green pyramid tip. Everyone is indifferent. There’s a message on the back, smudged with gun oil from where it had been pressed to a new pistol. _Happy Birthday, Peril._

VI.

Napoleon decided to sell the West Village townhouse. He arranged for an agent, and then spent a quiet afternoon rearranging the furniture, removing the nailed map and repairing the wall. The end result wasn’t as seamless as he hoped, but replacing the old print (which he found in the garage) on its hook helped to cover part of the damage. He rolled the map up and stacked the photographs together on the kitchen counter, put the tools away in the garage, and took a well-deserved nap on the couch.

When he woke up, Illya was sitting at the kitchen counter, the map unscrolled, photographs in his hands. Napoleon blinked at him, surprised, sleep-fuddled. For a long moment he thought he was not yet awake. Then Illya said, gruffly, “Sorry about damage to wall.”

“No you’re not,” Napoleon said dryly, though he sat up, and carded a hand through his hair, yawning. He was definitely growing old, not to have stirred at all when Illya had entered the house. 

Illya raised his eyebrows, but didn’t argue. “You are selling house.” 

Absently, Napoleon wondered where the information leak was, and decided he didn’t quite care. He leaned his flank on the back of the couch, and yawned again. “I’m moving out of New York permanently.” 

“Why?” Illya frowned at him. “You like it here.” 

Napoleon forced a smile. Trust Illya to sense that. “The world’s bigger than New York.”

Illya looked away, still frowning. He shuffled the photographs in his hands, then he sighed. “The first two years, I wanted to kill you.”

“Only two years?” 

Illya shrugged. “Gaby kept very close eye on me. Probably why you are still alive. After that, life became very busy. Became Number One in Section Two. For a time, I hoped you would come back to U.N.C.L.E.,” Illya conceded, in the same unemotional tone. 

“I imagined how it could happen. Maybe you would return as though nothing had happened. Maybe you would ask to return. Maybe I would have you shot. Or just reject it. Or live with it. Such a waste of time, sentiment. Then I heard that you became a broker. Interesting move. Ran out of money?”

“Got bored,” Napoleon admitted, warily. 

“Thought you would. Not like you to retire quietly somewhere and live out rest of days.” Illya sniffed. “Kept eye on freelance lists for a while. But you became broker. Mercenary. Selling information. But mostly to CIA. Often to Mossad. Sometimes, MI6. Once to KGB.” 

“That was an unpleasant experience.” Napoleon was a little surprised. He had kept the KGB deal very carefully secret. If anything, Sanders would probably have gotten upset if he had caught wind of it. “Learned my lesson.”

“Good.” Illya slipped the photographs into a jacket pocket. He left the map on the table, getting off the seat and straightening up. “I think,” Illya added carefully, “That you should not try to contact me any more.” 

Sensation seemed to hollow out for a moment, leaving Napoleon light-headed. “All right. Sorry about before. I probably shouldn’t have presumed.” 

Illya stalked over to the couch, hands loose at his sides. “You see,” he added, his lip curling, “I would prefer not to change my mind about killing you.” 

“Duly noted,” Napoleon agreed, and yelped as Illya abruptly grabbed hold of his jacket lapels, hauling him bodily up to his knees, kissing him. Napoleon had kissed and been kissed by others, more than he could remember, between now and the first day of his new life, but not like this, with no tenderness and far more anger than lust. This was more like a blow, a gauntlet thrown. This was Illya trying to hurt him. 

Napoleon froze up for a moment before he growled and bit back. It’s been more than _ten years_ , he wanted to shout; he had already said that he was _sorry_ , what more did Illya want? He had _tried_. The last time, he had tried to leave as gently as he could and he was _sorry_ , but why did Illya still care, anyway? Why should _Napoleon_ care? And besides, Napoleon _had_ tried to apologise again before and had met only silence for his efforts. He whined. There was blood on his tongue. 

“Illya,” Napoleon slurred, an apology, a question, and Illya bit him again, mauling him, a low sound scraped raw between them. 

Somehow Illya ended up clambering over, pinning Napoleon down on the couch, and Napoleon would rather not have it out like this, with only festered anger and regret strung between them, this lust sown from nothing but ill will. But even as he tugged insistently at Illya’s shoulders, Illya got his teeth lower, past Napoleon’s jaw to the soft meat of his throat, and for a wild moment Napoleon thought that Illya would bite down, kill him like this. He pulled Illya’s jacket off, instead, stripping it down, like disassembling a rifle, stock, barrel, trigger; Illya’s teeth eased against his pulse and he hissed instead as Napoleon’s thigh rode up between his legs. Illya was achingly, damningly hard. 

Illya groaned something in Russian, a curse, thick with fury and helpless lust and something like self-loathing, and Napoleon twisted up, tried to kiss at least the last of that away, but Illya turned his cheek, his breath choking out in an angry rasp. “Don’t,” Illya growled harshly. 

“Illya.” Napoleon reached for Illya’s cheek, his shoulder, and his wrist was pinned quickly against the back of the couch. Illya’s eyes were squeezed shut, his breathing hitched and unsteady, tension an iron vise locking his shoulders tight, his fingers trembling and tapping against Napoleon’s wrist and the edge of the couch. Napoleon drew the hand locked on his own wrist close, kissed the thumb, then drew two fingers into his mouth, felt the roughened pads tap against his tongue for a moment before stilling as he sucked. 

“That mouth of yours,” Illya rasped, in Russian now, scoured far too raw for anything but the language of the lands of his birth. “God. Why didn’t you stay? Why _wouldn’t_ you stay?” 

“I’m sorry,” Napoleon tried again, the slicked fingers pressed against his cheek, but now, as before, as years ago, Illya wasn’t listening. Mouth buried against Napoleon’s throat, Illya fumbled their trousers open, blindly, and growled as he squeezed their cocks together, too hard, not enough slick. Napoleon whimpered breathlessly, and felt the tension strung through Illya’s body ease a little. He could work with this, if he wanted to; desire had always been one of Napoleon’s favourite weapons. He could submit, make all the right noises, suck Illya off, leave again in the morning.

Just like the last time. 

“Illya,” Napoleon tried instead, gently, free hand stroking soothingly down the tight arch of Illya’s back, and promptly got nipped roughly for his trouble.

“Shut up,” Illya growled, and Napoleon sighed. 

Illya’s hips twitched against his, then rolled, slow and deliberate. This was not sex, not what Napoleon was used to, no little games, no making the right moves, the right noises. Illya had gone silent, but for the occasional stutter to his breaths, and Napoleon was silent as well, because he didn’t know what else to say. He tried to concentrate on just coming. Maybe that was all that Illya wanted. A last fuck, no pretences, couched in everything that they had ruined between them. Illya was first, with a low, harsh grunt that he sank against Napoleon’s shoulder, and Napoleon had to stroke himself off, as Illya’s hand stilled and smeared the mess over Napoleon’s shirt, face still turned away, trembling. It was unsatisfying at the end, like working in a new wound over an old scar. Napoleon swallowed bitterness and bewilderment both, and waited, come drying on his shirt and skin. 

“I don’t want to see you again,” Illya said at last, quietly, without looking up. Back to English. “Not for a while.” 

Napoleon forced himself to bite down his first retort. “I heard you the first time.”

“I said-” Illya began, then he exhaled, shook his head, and leaned up, onto his elbows, his expression sober as he flicked his stare over Napoleon’s bloodied mouth, his marked neck. Finally, he simply said, “Thank you for the birthday present,” and uncurled, heading for the ground floor bathroom. 

Napoleon watched him go, then he shrugged to himself and headed upstairs to get cleaned up. When he came back downstairs again, Illya was gone. Napoleon stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, blankly, then he went to pour himself a glass of scotch, ambling over to the kitchen counter, where the map still lay unscrolled. The open road called with a lover's confidence to Napoleon again, as he ran his eyes absently through the names of familiar and unfamiliar places, drinking. Then he set the empty glass aside, folded up the map, and burned it in the sink.

**Author's Note:**

> Undersea Russian Cable Cutting: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article
> 
> photographs: all sourced through googlefu.  
> —  
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent


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